By the String of Choices Made
by rayemars
Summary: Elizabeth, William and Jack: Sometimes it's impossible to separate a curse from a boon. [Post At World's End]


Disclaimer: The Pirates of the Caribbean belongs to Disney.

This contains **spoilers** for the scene after the credits. If you couldn't stay to see it, consider yourself warned.  
——————

-

There isn't much decent work a woman without family bonds can get in these days, especially when she starts showing with no wedding ring and a husband whose ship is not listed on any register. Elizabeth does a lot of laundry the first two years, most of it brought to her by the old woman who also lives on the outskirts of town. Amelia is the only one who takes her word and calls her 'Mrs. Turner;' everyone else uses 'Miss,' with varying levels of scorn in their voices.

Elizabeth thinks _I am the Pirate King_ and walks past them with her shoulders back, just like she learned as a little girl. She knows her father cannot be moved by the world of the living any more, for good or ill, but just in case she wants to be sure she makes him proud.

When the child is born, Elizabeth names him Weatherby William Turner, and calls him Bill. When he's old enough to travel, she moves to a port town, and earns a living by holding cargo for various pirates in exchange for a cut of the take. She supplements the income with more laundry, so that she and Bill can wear clothes and eat without arousing too much suspicion among the town. The fact that strange men have been occasionally noticed at night on the path behind the port that leads to her house already causes enough talk; but she endures, because an accusation of whoredom would earn a shorter jail sentence than abetting piracy, and she won't have to worry about Bill being hung with her.

Elizabeth thinks _I guard my husband's heart with my life_ and walks past the men and women in the marketplace with all the pride of her existence.

And the years pass.  
-

When Bill is almost seven, Jack arrives. Elizabeth sees the sails of the Black Pearl from a distance, and notes that it has changed ownership again--the last gossip she heard, when a crew came to collect their cargo two months ago, said that it was in Barbossa's hands again. And Barbossa has taken great care to avoid this port once he learned she lived there.

Elizabeth knows she should be wary; fewer pirates leave their cargo with her these days, and the captains of the ones that do tend to challenge her. She's been away too long, she knows; but so long as Captain Teague remains in charge of the Code, she doesn't have to fear an outright mutiny. Bill is nearly old enough--just a few more years, and then they can return to the sea. Just a short wait longer.

All waits are short compared to the one for William.

She watches the Black Pearl come up to port, and then goes back inside to get her pistols and derringer. She calls for Bill, to make sure he's carrying his knife; and as night falls, she gives him the derringer, too. Just in case.

William's heart is hidden beneath the floorboards in the bedroom, with a rug thrown over them to conceal the marks where they were pried up once. Elizabeth worries more about Jack trying to steal the barrels of spices hidden under the main room than she is about him looking for the chest, even though it's somewhat vexing to know that she trusts him on _anything_.  
-

When night comes, she sits in a chair by the fire, and nods off a few times only to wake up abruptly not long later. She has to rekindle the fire twice, but she never sleeps long enough that it goes out completely.

Jack doesn't make it up to the house until nearly sunrise, and she can smell him through the open windows even before he reaches the door--someone either spilled half a bottle of rum on him, or cracked him in the head with it. Neither would surprise her.

"Elizabeth!" she hears him drawl outside the door, in lieu of knocking. "Offer an old friend hospitality?"

He's not drunk enough to hide the smirk in those last words. Elizabeth glances heavenward and shifts her skirt so that she can reach the pistol strapped to her leg through its slit more easily, and heads to the door. She heard the cot creak when Bill sat up at Jack's first call, so there's no point in lowering her voice.

"If it's _hospitality_ you want, you should have spoken to one of the bartenders in town," she replies, unlocking the door. "They'll direct you to the right houses."

Jack is leaning against the frame, head pillowed against one arm, hand holding a bottle, looking the same as ever. His other arm is dangling at his waist, a slight distance from his pistol.

Elizabeth tilts her chin up just enough to glare at him, making sure to keep that hand in her sight and her own already tucked through the slit in her skirt. Jack stares back.

For several long moments, they don't move; and then he grins and raises his hand in the air. He could still hit her with the bottle, she supposes, but she removes the hand from her skirt. Jack lets the hand holding the bottle drop to his side.

"Awful rumors they tell about you down there," Jack says casually, strolling into the house. "Did you kill anyone's parents or some such dreadful thing?"

Elizabeth doesn't dignify him with a response, and Jack drops down into one of the chairs at the table. He sets the bottle down heavily as he does; she can hear the faintest slosh of liquid inside.

"Well," he adds, "I'm sure you have an explanation for Will already."

She folds her arms at that, because it's too tempting to let them remain where they could reach her pistol. "Will's not one to buy foolish stories like that."

Jack raises an eloquent eyebrow, but shrugs the question off. "Perhaps they'll never get around to him, anyway. It's been, what, three years since the Flying Dutchman was last spotted?"

". . . Four," Elizabeth says quietly, moving toward the second chair, across the table from where he's sitting. "No rumors have come since the one from Nassau."

"I suspect he had a lot of dead to take care of after that one," Jack replies, examining his hand. In the firelight, Elizabeth can see that two of his rings are cutting into his skin--his knuckles are swollen. The smell comes from being hit with the rum bottle, then. "Busy work."

"Have you come to leave any cargo, then?" she asks. Anyone else who came to her door willing to talk of William, she would have spent hours getting every detail from them; but with Jack there's no point. He'll either have heard everything she has, or he won't have paid attention to any of it--and no matter which it is, he'll pretend to the latter.

"Unfortunately, no," Jack says. "We sold all we'd gained already; this is just to stock up on supplies. And _this_," he adds, letting his hand finally drop away from the neck of the bottle, "is for you."

Elizabeth gives it an unimpressed look. "A half a cup of gin," she replies dryly. "I'm flattered."

"It's not gin." Jack looks insulted. "Nasty stuff, that. No taste at all. Wouldn't be caught dead with it unless it was all that's left."

"Mm-hmm," Elizabeth replies, still not picking up the grimy bottle. "So what is it?"

"Aqua vite . . . veta . . . er, vit. . . ."

Elizabeth stares at him.

". . . Aqua vitae?" she whispers.

Jack snaps his fingers. "Yes, that!"

"This is the elixir of life," she replies, still disbelieving. She reaches a finger out to touch the bottle. ". . . how? Why?"

"Well," Jack says, leaning back further and throwing his arm over the back of the chair. "I realized something, as I was leaving the Fountain of Youth. I, you see, am now immortal. And Will, bless his heart that you've got somewhere about here, is also immortal. And _I_ do not wish to spend the rest of my days worrying that if I see his ship on the horizon, I'm going to have to listen to him weeping into his cups on how you're dead--or worse," he adds, gesturing widely to her bosom, "sagging."

Elizabeth gives him a disgusted look, but it's too much of a reflex to have any impact, and she can barely take her eyes away from the bottle long enough to do it.

She finally picks it up several moments later, holding it gingerly, because if she drops it and this isn't a cruel joke of his. . . .

The bottle looks like it's seen the worst of the sea. Salt is crusted on it in patches, and the grime is thick enough that she can see Jack's fingerprints in places; and there are teeth marks in the cork. But there's a little spot up by the top that's nearly clean, and when she tilts the liquid towards it and looks at it by the light of the fire, she can see how it almost seems to gleam. It's clearer than any water she's seen before.

"Jack . . ." she says softly, still watching the water slide back and forth in the light.

He stands, pushing the chair back as he does, but she only notices it from the corner of her eye. The water sparkles if she tilts it to the right angle, in a way that makes her think of the diamond necklace her mother used to wear for important functions.

"Of course," he says, tone as casual as when he'd talked about her reputation among the town, "it could be poisoned."

Elizabeth looks over and up at him, eyes widening. Jack smiles.

When she says nothing, his expression widens to a sharp grin for a moment. He really does look the same as ever, aside from a few changes in clothes and weapons. The firelight glints off a gold tooth as he stares evenly at her.

She sets the bottle back down on the table, carefully, and wishes she hadn't sat so that it's impossible to reach her pistol before he can pull his.

"Mother?" comes Bill's voice from the door to the bedroom, and when her gaze snaps over to him, she can see that he's holding his knife behind his back. Even in the middle of this moment, she makes a note to chide him later for not carrying the derringer as well.

"Who're you?" Jack asks, turning away from her and sliding into someone more familiar, if not more welcome.

"This is our son," Elizabeth replies, standing and letting her hand fall to the slit of her skirt again, even though Jack seems to be more interested in Bill than revenge now.

Bill blinks, hand dropping to his side. "This is my father?"

She finds herself choking on air. "**No**! No, no, certainly _not!_"

"'Suppose I'd remember that," Jack adds.

Elizabeth snorts indelicately.

"Still," Jack says, crouching slightly and bracing his hands on his knees, peering at the boy. "I see why you're so questioned. You look quite a bit more like your mother than Will."

Elizabeth chases him out of the house then.

She returns after his silhouette starts blurring into the shadows as he heads toward the port, tucking her pistol back into its sheath as she makes her way up the path. The metal isn't hot; she didn't fire it.

Bill is waiting at the doorway, still clutching his knife in confusion. "Who _was_ that?" he asks, as soon as she's within hearing.

Elizabeth doesn't reply at first. She pauses at the doorway, turning to stare down at the docks and the sails of the Black Pearl, invisible in the moonlight; and she rests an arm against Bill's shoulders before she finally answers. "That's your Uncle Jack."

Bill is frowning. "He's not right in the head, is he?"

"No," Elizabeth agrees. "But he's a pirate captain, so it doesn't matter."

Her son nods at the explanation--she's told him enough tales that that's all he needs to know to accept it. "What's that?" he asks, looking over her arm toward the bottle on the table.

"_That_," Elizabeth says lightly, "is something you're too young to drink."  
-

She puts the bottle away on the highest shelf, where Bill won't be able to reach it even if he pulls up a chair and climbs. When she's sure it's good and hidden behind tins and driftwood and other assorted bits that have built up over the last several years, she goes to check that he's asleep.

"When are we going to be pirates?" he asks, as she leans down to tuck him in.

"Soon," Elizabeth answers, resting her hand on his shoulder.

"First you have to meet your father," she adds, patting him before stepping away and over toward her bed. "Then you need to get a bit older, so that you can do your share of the work."

"I could be a ship's boy," Bill mutters.

Elizabeth laughs as she pulls down the blanket and begins to unfasten her skirt. "Pirates don't need ship's boys," she points out. "They need able seamen, and bosuns and quartermasters and captains."

She can hear Bill huff irritatedly, but he doesn't argue. He's asleep by the time she's set aside her skirt and shirt and climbed into bed. Elizabeth is exhausted from staying up all night with only a few naps; she's barely pulled the lumpy pillow closer before she's asleep as well.

As soon as she wakes, late in the morning, she runs out to the main room. She doesn't even take the time to dress, and instead opens the shutter farthest from the town's sight that still offers a view of the sea.

The Black Pearl is gone.

Elizabeth lets out her breath in a slow exhale, staring at the waves and the ships in the port with their white sails, and then closes the shutter again. She makes her way back to the bedroom, to get dressed so she can start her deliveries; she's already late.

She isn't sure if the room still smells of rum and sea salt, or if it's her imagination. Elizabeth throws all the windows open wide before she and Bill leave with the bundles.

And the years pass.  
-

For a year and a half, the bottle remains untouched at the back of the top shelf. Elizabeth is fairly sure Bill's forgotten it was ever there in the first place by this point.

She can't forget.

As the days drag on, each seeming longer now that she knows there is a way--perhaps--that they would mean nothing at all, Elizabeth finds herself glancing at every window or pane of dirty glass she passes.

_He will recognize me_, she thinks as she forces herself to turn her head forward again. _He will know me_. _It's only ten years_.

Next time, it will be twenty. After that, thirty. Their son will look older the third time he meets his father than Elizabeth looked when Will first left. The sixth time William comes ashore, she probably won't be alive--she may not even make it the next two years without some spy of the East India Trading Company or the Royal Navy bringing back the news of a female Captain Turner. She may never see William again, unless she manages to die on the sea.

These are not new thoughts to her; they have been Elizabeth's companions for eight long years. But the bottle and the bright liquid inside it make them louder, make them dog her every step rather than just many of them.

_When I first met you_, she thinks harshly, staring out at the sea one night, _your idea of revenge was only to shoot him_.

Perhaps death changes a man. Or perhaps immortality did.

Then again, Barbossa had only _left_ Jack to die. She had killed him. Their crimes were not so very different, save for the fact that she had succeeded and he had not.

Another night, not long after that one, Elizabeth takes the bottle down from the top shelf and hides it in the cabinet, tucking it behind the bag of flour.  
-

She does not doubt that William will continue to love her, or even that he will love her long after she is gone. She loves him, and has loved him though many changes and some betrayals, and has loved him beyond death already; she gives him the same credit.

She doubts that she will be able to bear it.

Elizabeth glances at herself in every glass she passes and tries to imagine what it will feel like to see William young, handsome, unchanging, even as she is older, is old, is gone. She kicks aside the rug late at night when Bill is sleeping and stands on the floorboards in her bare feet, listening for the faint pulse of the chest beneath, and wonders what will become of Will's heart after she dies. Bill will take care of it, of course, and even his children might--if he lives long enough to have children, if he lives well enough to know they exist, which he _better_--but what after that? Will the great-grandchildren, the great-great-grandchildren, who will live in a very different world, one where the East India Trading Company has taken control of the ports and the Royal Navy has claimed the seas and Calypso views no one as friend, only foe--will they take care of the chest? Will they believe? Will William's heart over time be lost in a dusty attic, a grim pawner's shop, a dank ship's hold, until one day someone manages to force it open and, recoiling in horror at seeing a heart pulsing with life hard-earned so far from a body, tries to destroy it?

Elizabeth pictures William standing on the deck of the Flying Dutchman, performing the duty he had no choice in taking over, and then suddenly collapsing the way Davy Jones did--not knowing why, not knowing by who, perhaps wondering in his last moments why she didn't keep her promise better--and can barely keep down bile. She burns her arms in the hot water of the laundry tub because she keeps them in it too long, distracted by sobbing. Bill has to run down to the town and buy a small pot of butter to put on them.

Elizabeth waits for him to get back, sitting outside the house and staring out at the sea as the sun sets; but there is no green flash. There are no black sails on the horizon. She is still waiting.

And the years pass.  
-

There are eight months left when late one night, after Bill is asleep, Elizabeth takes the bottle from the cabinet, and then goes down to the port and takes a dinghy from a poorly guarded dock.

She fights the night waters and sails it out far enough that the shore is dim; she can't even see the candles she left burning in her windows. If she dies, hopefully this is far enough that her body will be washed out to sea and not back up to the land.

Elizabeth tacks the dinghy until it's pointing too close to the wind to go, and then lets the sails flap in the breeze as she sits down. She tucked the bottle, wrapped in a coat, underneath the bench before she left; Jack may have poisoned it, but she doesn't doubt him that it's aqua vitae.

She unwraps the coat and leaves it draped over her knees as she lifts the bottle up, trying to get a glimpse of the water inside in the moonlight. The bottle is dustier now, and still as grimy as the day Jack brought it to her; the cork has crumbled a bit, but when she braces her palm against it and the neck of the bottle, she can still faintly feel the teeth marks.

So like Jack--a filthy exterior, and who knew what lay beneath. She wouldn't be surprised if he just grabbed the first thing at hand when he reached the fountain; the sacred and profane were all equal to him.

Elizabeth stares at the bottle in her hands for a long time, listening to the ocean and the luffing of the sails, and has to remind herself again and again that this is not a question of what Jack would do to her. This is a question of what Jack would do to her and William.

She's sold the take of the last cargo she held just two days ago. There's money enough for Bill to feed and clothe himself, and she's taught him swordsmanship, and he can pawn some of the weapons; he'll survive. There's a smithy in the next town down the road, where he can get an apprenticeship. She's told him where to go to meet his father, and when, just in case, and he knows where the chest is hidden. William will not be forsaken, at least not when she's still capable of making sure that's so.

If she sees Will again sooner rather than later, she hopes she'll have enough time to apologize.

Then, before she lets herself think any longer, Elizabeth wrenches the cork from the bottle. She pushes up onto her feet, immediately steadying herself when the dinghy rocks. She waits to lift the bottle until she's certain she's balanced, because she has not been on land so long that she's forgotten how to meet her fate standing.

Elizabeth sets the rim of the bottle against her lips, tasting dirt and salt and gun oil; and then she closes her eyes and tips her head back.

The water is simply water.

Yet it's colder that it should be, given the warm night; it tastes cleaner than any she's ever drunk before, even as a girl. Elizabeth realizes too late that she's drunk more than she meant--she meant to leave a little, just in case, for Bill to consider when he's far older, but now there's only a few drops left, and. . . .

She wipes her lips with the back of her hand once she's pulled the bottle away, catching a stray drop about to fall, and then licks it up; and then she runs her finger along the inside of the bottle's neck as far as she can reach, trying to get a few last drops. She isn't thirsty--not at all anymore, in fact, despite the sea breeze--but she wants one last taste.

Finally, she sets the bottle back on the bottom of the dinghy; and then she stands, and waits.  
-

Two hours pass, judging by the stars, before Elizabeth begins to think that perhaps Jack doesn't hate her as much as he has the right to. It's a strange thought to entertain, but she is still on her feet. The wind has shifted, and she's had to adjust to keep the boat from blowing too far from or too near to the shore; but it's a favorable wind right now, if she chooses to turn back.

It _is_ possible that he used a slow-acting poison, guessing that she would come out to the ocean to drink it; but Elizabeth shakes her head at the thought even as she begins to tack the sail. Jack can't be trusted any farther away than a pistol's shot, but she thinks of how he folded Will's hand around the hilt of that broken sword and knows that he doesn't have that kind of cruelty.

No one notices when she ties the dinghy back up at the dock, any more than they noticed it was absent in the first place. She makes her way back up the path to the house, and blows out the candles, and tucks the blanket up a little higher around Bill's shoulders, and goes to bed.

The next morning, when her son is out delivering bundles of laundry, Elizabeth pries up the floorboards in the bedroom and hides the bottle away beside Will's chest.

And the months pass.  
-

A week before Will can return, a parrot flies up to the house, with a scrap of paper tied around its leg. Elizabeth notes that the Black Pearl is back in Jack's hands again, and pulls it free; the parrot flies off again as soon as she does, even though Bill tries to lure it into staying with bits of bread.

The note is short, and William's handwriting: _I'm coming there_.

Elizabeth keeps the paper tucked inside her shirt, against her heart, for the rest of the week.  
-

The night Will comes back, Bill stays up much later than Elizabeth usually lets him, because William can't cease being amazed by the fact that he has a son, even though she can see on his face that he has no idea what he's supposed to say or do. She tries not to laugh at him, which is hard because she can't bring herself to be more than a few steps away from him or even to take her hand from his long enough to cover her smiles.

Bill finally goes to sleep, however, after Will has moved his cot into far corner of the main room so that they can have the bedroom to themselves.

"I have to tell you something," Elizabeth makes herself say as soon as she shuts the door, because she's learned from her mistakes.

Will has been holding her hair in the palm of his hand, staring at it as if trying to memorize it all over again, but he looks up at her with that. "What is it?"

Elizabeth bites her lip, and then walks over to the rug thrown over the floorboards to conceal the marks where they were pried up twice. She pushes it aside and begins to pull them up a third time; Will helps.

When enough are free, Elizabeth kneels next to the hole and pulls the empty bottle out. It's collected more dirt now thanks to its time underground, but the fingerprints too large for her hands are still clear in places. She hands it to Will.

He frowns in confusion even as he takes it. ". . . I don't understand," he says, pressing his thumb against the teeth marks in the cork. "What is it?"

"Jack brought it," she tells him.

William realizes a moment later; he freezes and then stares at her, wide-eyed. ". . . Elizabeth . . . immortality, it's not--"

She clenches her hands in her skirt and cuts him off. "I'll pay it," she says, looking him in the eyes. "I'll pay whatever it costs. I can't leave your heart in anyone else's hands, Will."

William is still watching her, amazed; but then he starts again and glances at the door. "Did--?"

She shakes her head. "No. He's too young . . . and I drank it all. I didn't mean to. . . ."

". . . If you aren't careful, you spend all immortality at the fountain," Will says quietly, looking down at the bottle again; and Elizabeth realizes with absolute certainty that these are Jack's words he's recalling. "More people find it than are capable of leaving it."

Elizabeth glances down at the hole, where she can just see the edge of the chest, and then nods once.

A long time passes before Will sets the bottle down on the floor.

"Every day," he says, quietly, staring at the bottle rather than her, ". . . I was afraid of seeing you in one of the boats. Or in the water."

Elizabeth decides it will be best never to mention to him how she drunk the aqua vitae. Instead, she reaches out and cups her hands around his.

He gazes at the bottle for another long moment, before closing his eyes and letting out his breath in a long exhale.

"I suppose now, when I see him again, it'd be wrong to shoot him," he says wryly.

Elizabeth laughs--it comes out so sudden that she couldn't have held it back if she tried. The tension in her shoulders, in her hands, eases away with the sound; and she sees Will close his eyes briefly, as if this is another moment he wants to remember in such detail that it will endure the next decade.

"What did he do no--" she starts to ask; and then she cuts herself off with a shake of her head.

"No," Elizabeth decides, and stands. She reaches out and cups her hand against William's face, leaning down enough that she can whisper her next words. "Tell me after."

Will presses his hand against hers, smiling up at her even as he pushes onto his feet as well. She takes a step to the side, so that she won't accidentally knock over the bottle and wake Bill, and Will follows before stepping in close enough to wrap his arms around her waist.

"No sand this time," Elizabeth murmurs, and he laughs out loud before lifting her up and off her feet. She wraps her arms tight around his shoulders, until she's pressed so close that her heartbeat almost echoes against his chest, and then thinks to herself that if--when--she sees Jack again, the first thing she'll have to do is thank him, even if the next _is_ shooting him.  
-

And the years pass.  
-

Before the next time William Turner can come to shore, his wife has been hung for piracy, has been cut down on account of failure to die, and has fled the town she was living in; his son has been press-ganged onto a Royal Navy warship, has successfully appealed his impressment, and is currently unaccounted for among the islands; and the last pirate stronghold of the Caribbean, Nassau, has fallen.

Elizabeth nearly dives off the Black Pearl when she sees the Flying Dutchman rise into view--but she hasn't lived forever long enough that sanity has begun to loosen its hold.

"He's coming soon enough, Captain Turner," Barbossa drawls from his place at the helm. "_He'll_ always have a need to exist."

There's something tired in his voice, something Elizabeth never expected to hear echoed in Jack's own, and it worries her that the man was being honest when he told her once that he continues to live because death is even more unpleasant, because Barbossa has said the same thing.

The Black Pearl is infamous in the Caribbean now, even more so than before, but only because it is the last pirate ship--barring the Flying Dutchman--that still sails constantly. The warships Jack and Barbossa take over when trying to get the Pearl back from one another don't count, mainly because no one keeping records will believe that the names belong to the same people over and over again.

"The Royal Navy won't last forever," she responds fiercely, and leans further over the rail as the damp white sails draw closer.

"Of course," Barbossa replies, bringing his ship around so that it will be alongside Will's when it reaches them. "The trading companies will buy them out eventually."

She looks away from the Flying Dutchman long enough to glare at him over her shoulder. Barbossa gives her that familiar, biting grin back; and soon Elizabeth turns away from it and to where Will is waving from the rigging.

"No one can claim the whole sea," she replies, glancing at the ropes and wondering if she can just swing over to William when they're close enough.

"It's not the sea that's the problem," Barbossa replies, smoothly steering the ship ahead. "It's the lack of ports. Not all of us have ships that can repair themselves, excluding the needs of the living crew for food and water."

"You're a pessimist," she retorts, grabbing hold of the rope and stepping up onto the railing. The Dutchman is nearly alongside them now.

Behind her, Barbossa laughs, knowing that that is as much of a capitulation as she will ever give; and a few moments later, William swings onto their ship. 


End file.
